"Over the three-year period, the average effective rate for all 275 companies dropped by a fifth, from 21.4 percent in 2001 to 17.2 percent in 2002-2003.
The statistics are startling:
Eighty-two of the 275 companies, almost a third of the total, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $102 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury, totaling $12.6 billion. These companies' "negative tax rates" meant that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years."